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How Hard is it to Climb Mount Toubkal?
As you can imagine, I get asked A LOT of questions about the trips we do.
And I don’t think it’ll be much of a surprise to you that a lot of the same questions come up time and time again.
Considering I get so many of the same questions, I thought I’d do some work, and get some proper answers to those questions, and with that in mind, I’ve started using my Garmin watch to track the routes we take on the treks.
It’s a pretty fancy gizmo, and it tells me distance travelled, time taken and all sorts of other cool stuff, so stay tuned and I’ll keep sharing my findings!
The first trip I used the watch on was the Mount Toubkal trek, so here’s some very precise answers to the kind of questions I get every day!
Day 1
We start the day by driving from Marrakech to Imi Ourhlad. The drive takes around 1.5 hours to get to Imi Ourhlad where we meet our mules and get loaded up. Imi Ourhlad sits at 1,400m.
The trek starts uphill and spend the morning climbing to the top of the Tizi n’Techt Pass. As can been seen from the diagram below, the pass is our high point for the day (2020m). From the pass it is downhill to our accommodation that evening at Tizi Oussem.
The total distance for day one is 15km and we were out for a total of 6hrs 24 minutes – this includes stops and a long lunch.
Day 2
Day 2 follows the same sort of profile as day 1. We spend the morning walking up hill to the pass of Tizi h’Mzik (2489m) and stop for lunch just after the pass. It is a much shorter day with total distance for today of 10km. We take today at a leisurely pace and are out for around 6 hours again including an unhurried lunch.
The afternoon is spent walking into Imlil which you can see form the top of the Pass.
Day 3
Day 3 is a long one! Today we make our way to the refuge; the final stop before the summit.
The profile for today is an uphill one. It is not as steep as the two previous days but it is pretty gradual.
We start the day at 1,700m and finish at the refuge at 3,207m. The total distance today is 17.74 kilometres and it took us as a group 7hrs to walk it last time, although again this was with a nice stop for lunch and an orange juice break in the morning!
Day 4 – Summit Day
The route to the summit is steep, but we spend our time zig-zagging up the tracks. From the refuge to the summit takes around 3-4 hours and is only 5.9km in total. The summit is at 4,167m so we have a total of 960m of ascent to make in the morning.
Once we have reached the summit and had some time for photos it is back the way we came to the refuge.
We have lunch at the refuge and pack up our bags. The afternoon is then spent reversing day 3 back to Imlil for our lift back to Marrakech.
Total distance for the day is 30km!
Good job there is a Spa and swimming pool waiting for us when we get to Marrackech!
Total trip distance for this trek is 72km (that’s a half an ironman triathlon!) our total ascent is 4,218m for the whole trip.
That’s a good 4 days of walking!
If you are interested in this trip why not check out our next trips to Mount Toubkal? Click Here for More Information
